


Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows

by hippocrates460



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Found Family, Found careerpath, Many Weasleys - Freeform, One instance of Ginny/Gabrielle/OFC, Or that's what I'm going for here, The rest of the crew is there too, you know how it goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23856868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hippocrates460/pseuds/hippocrates460
Summary: And she said losing loveIs like a window in your heart- Graceland (Paul Simon)Broken hearts and dirty windowsMake life difficult to see- Souvenirs (John Prine)Post-war recovery, with found family, pining, adventure, creating a sense of home through the power of books, boardgames, and bread. And a little bit of camping. As a treat.
Relationships: Gabrielle Delacour/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 15
Kudos: 28
Collections: Femmefest 2020





	Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiertorata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiertorata/gifts).



> With compliments to Kiertorata, who is not only a spectacular and wonderful person, but also the best person to gift something to. I hope you enjoy this half as much as I enjoyed writing it, thank you for the wishlist of options that made my poor brain go or.... we can try to work in as many as possible?  
> Bingo for everyone who checks off while reading, you'll find I tried my best to include everything barring time-travel, AUs, and parenting. I had to keep those things for a sequel ;)  
> Endless whole-hearted full-bodied thanks to everyone that's helped me, too many to name, too obvious to refer to. You're all amazing and I love you <3

“I hope you know I hate you,” Neville pants as he makes his way up another hill. Ginny looks over her shoulder at him and hates him too. There’s nothing left of him, he’s not plump, or cheerful, or even really all that kind, anymore. Makes up for it with bravado, like she doesn’t know him better than that.

“Yeah, well,” she says. “You suck.”

“You’re one to talk,” he says, as much under his breath as he can while gasping for air. She thinks she hears him tack on a firm and determined _bitch_ , but she’s not paying attention anymore.

Luna has wandered off ahead, she always seems to be doing that. But now she’s standing at the top of the hill, and she’s waving at something, both her arms outstretched, large movements. Not towards Ginny and Neville, but out into the valley. Ginny picks up her pace and half-runs up the last bit, then stops right next to Luna. There’s a village here. By the side of a little river. It has a little church, and five or six wooden houses around it. It’s breathtaking. 

Luna takes Ginny’s hand, looks at her, and together they run down the hill. Neville’s shouts and cursing gets lost to the wind. 

It takes minutes to walk around all the little houses, and then Luna lies down in the middle of what must have at some point been a street. Ginny joins her, and Neville eventually catches up and lies down with them. “D’you think it’s Wizarding?” Ginny wonders out loud, and Luna makes an irritated noise.

“When’s the last time you saw a Wizarding school with a giant cross on it, Ginny?” Neville asks. “Besides look at the water damage, Impervius has been around since 1200 something, hasn’t it?”

“Alright,” she grumbles, turning onto her stomach. She lets the smell of grass and the tickle of the sun on her back distract her from the thoughts that are shouting inside her mind. After summer she’ll start at the Harpies, Neville and Luna will go to university. But Rolf will still be dying, and George will still be losing his mind. Neville’s gran will be mad with rage like she has been, and Harry will be locked inside Grimmauld Place, muttering to himself. 

It feels violent, to be separated while hurting. She knows that it doesn’t help to be locked up together, they’ve tried that, but something about knowing they’ll be going their own ways while still bleeding makes her feel halved, brutalized.

As if she can hear her thoughts, and Ginny wouldn’t bet against her being able to, Luna scrambles to her feet, determinately walks up to the decrepit building they’re closest to, and starts casting. Her magic crackles in the still summer air, but they’ve gotten good at this, bricks and mortar and the way they know not to trust very old wood without testing it first. Neville stands up second, and although he has to steady himself to let the dizziness fade, he starts casting too. So Ginny joins.

The sun sets late still, in August, and by the time it’s dark enough that they can’t see, Ginny is starving. Neville helps her with the tent, and then with dinner, and Luna arrives just on time to have a few bites here and there. Ginny is so sick of watching them disappear, and bites her tongue anyway. 

***

Harry cares enough about her to lie for her, but not enough to ask, so when her mum asks where she’ll go, she tells her Grimmauld Place. Ginny spends her days at practice, and her nights hauling around heavy broken things. It doesn’t feel like much, at first, but when Neville finds her there, in the middle of the winter, and she fixes a window absent-mindedly because she’s fixed hundreds in the past year and a half, she surprises herself with her sense of pride.

He surprises her by spending the rest of his winter break kneeling at the heavy clay between the houses and the river, and every day when he shows up for dinner he stands a little taller. 

“Wash your hands,” she tells him, and he does, at the little tap in the kitchen. There’s mud streaked across his brow that she doesn’t comment on, and a strength returning to him that awes her too much for her to put it into words.

“I haven’t heard from her either,” he tells her when she finds the courage to ask about Luna. “They’re doing something experimental, in Iceland. But I know she goes to her lectures.”

***

Luna surprises her too. The second summer after Ginny moved into what was once a bakery, Luna shows up with sickly pale Rolf. Who apparently isn’t actively dying anymore. They’ve seen each other enough that it shouldn’t be such a surprise, but Ginny can’t help stepping back in awe at the way Luna shines. She radiates contentment but her voice is small when she asks: “We’re thinking - the country air?” 

The hesitation makes Ginny’s skin crawl, but she points them in the direction of old blacksmith’s. 

Neville shows up a week later with people it takes Ginny a minute to recognize. Like Hannah Abbott, who coos at the pretty flowers as she tugs Millicent Bulstrode around by her hand.

Ginny hates cooking for them, and lets Hannah take over after a week of barely contained rage. Everyone is gentle with her, which is even worse, like she isn’t stronger than she’s ever been. Like she doesn’t make more money than she knows what to do with by writing her notes on the matches she sits through up in proper sentences and selling them to various newspapers. Like she doesn’t have all the time to read and rebuild and fanny about with her teammates.

One night she comes back from training late only to find a roaring fire in front of the little school, everyone around it laughing, and Rolf playing his guitar with careful movements.

She hides behind the house that’s closest to the riverbank, the only one that’s not properly safe to enter yet. Cries until her throat is raw and her eyes are swollen and Seamus of all people (when did he even get here?) finds her, picks her up to carry her all the way to her bed, and then tucks her in.

***

People come and go, so when Neville asks to stay a while she points him to a house. When he shows up at hers so far after dinner that she’s started her nighttime routine of rolling around the bed aimlessly begging for something to _happen_ , she snaps at him.

“Well sure,” he tells her, kind and strong again, “but it’s barely inhabitable and most of all, it’s cold.”

She huffs but rolls over, plans to tell him that if she elbows him in the face it’s definitely on him, and falls asleep before she can open her mouth.

When Luna shows up not long after, the process goes much the same. Except that she spends her days in the little school, making unholy noises that Ginny doesn’t want to know about. Rolf is in South America, apparently, something to do with beasts. Neville putters about the garden and works on his book. Ginny doesn’t dare to ask.

What if she asked and it killed it, this strange truce they have, where they all wake up wrapped in Luna’s hair and each other, where they get to sit and not think, and if Ginny wants to take a hammer to something to build or break, then that’s her right. What would she do without it?

***

Hermione stays with them for a few months, and Molly finally finds out about their little haven. She’s not as mad as Ginny had expected, which is upsetting in a way she’d rather not name. “What else have you been hiding?” Molly whispers, her hand small and soft in Ginny’s calloused ones. She’s not sure. 

“It needs a name,” Hermione says, pregnant and almost ready to talk to Ron about it, “maybe you can make the school into a cafe, or the big one into a library, or maybe you can rent the rooms out!” Ginny walks away then, and hears through the cracks in the ancient wood of the door she leans against how Luna tells Hermione that some things happen on their own time. Ginny looks at the flowers she now knows Neville planted when they were ugly onion-like bulbs, and thinks maybe she’s close to understanding. Maybe Hermione will get it too.

For the first time since Luna moved here, she walks into the old school. The benches have all been somehow stuck to a wall, as if you could sit on them there and stare at a blackboard on the ceiling. The floor space is entirely covered in large installations, made from unrecognizable scrap, and some canvases stand around. Everything smells like dust and paint and Luna. Neville walks in not long after, two steaming mugs of tea in his hands. “She’s with Hermione,” Ginny tells him.

“Thought you didn’t go here,” Neville tells her, handing her one of the mugs. He must’ve seen her go in, it’s just how she likes it.

“Would you let me read your book?” Ginny asks, and he nods. 

***

Ginny gets so used to the coming and going, the shelter she offers with Luna and Neville, and the ways in which every person leaves something behind, that she doesn’t really realize that Fleur’s little sister has been around a while until Neville mentions it. “Anyway,” he ends what must have been a long story she didn’t quite listen to. “What do you think?”

“Whatever,” she says, and he looks skeptical, but doesn’t press. 

She finds out why the next morning, when on her one day off she is woken up by an unholy banging noise, with enough creaking and tearing that she fears for the house she’s in. Neville and Luna are gone, which means it isn’t actually early, but it feels that way when she runs out in her pyjamas, barefoot, and has to walk around longer than should be possible to find that Gabrielle Delacour has taken a very large hammer to the creakiest house they have. 

“WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Ginny asks, almost wincing when she realizes just how aggressive that was. To her surprise, willow-like beautiful Gabrielle just takes off her protective glasses, and sniffs delicately. 

“Neville said I could,” she says, pronouncing Neville like he’s a town in France, which makes her much angrier than the demolishment did.

She casts a silencing charm so harsh that she’s not sure she’ll be able to undo it by herself, and stomps off for an angry shower and some seething coffee. 

***

Harry adopts two boys, far too soon after the war, and Ginny thinks uncharitable things like _it’s probably because he can’t stand the thought that Ron would have kids first_. He names them something ridiculous, but she doesn’t meet them properly until he adopts a little girl too. 

Ron, Hermione, and Harry arrive in town with five children between them, and they somehow all manage to fit into what became Hermione’s house when she was first pregnant. She seems to have adapted to the whole motherhood-and-personhood thing well, and spends her days writing in the shade of the trees behind the house. Ron helps Ginny with all the projects that involve loud noises and big construction, and Harry spends most of his time reading by the river, where he makes sure the babies don’t get too much sun, and the older children don’t drown themselves or each other. Molly and Arthur come over too, some days, but they haven’t spent the night away from The Burrow since that time they all went to Egypt, and they Apparate back as soon as dinner is over.

While Ginny sits in the water, wearing Neville’s old underpants and a t-shirt that probably belonged to Bill at some point, she notices why Gabrielle tore down a whole wall for the first time. She’s been avoiding this side of the house, not because of a misplaced sense of privacy, like with Luna, but because it hurt to see something torn open like that. She hadn’t been able to look at it, for so long that it became muscle memory not to. Now it’s like stretching something sore. New, achey, but not actually bad. Where a rotten wall was replaced with a gaping wound, now glimmers an assembly of carefully fitted window panes. Most of them are made up of smaller squares, some even have stained glass, and it doesn’t take an expert to see that these windows have been carefully scavenged together and mended. Normally, Ginny would appreciate everything about such a project. Today she’s glad to let herself be distracted by James, who at five years old is only just taller than her as she sits and is using this advantage to slap her head with muddy hands.

As she dries the kids off with rough towels and threats of bed without a story, she notices she’s being stared at. She’s not actually far away, but it feels like they are staring at each other from opposite sides of a looking glass. The floor-length robe she’s seen Gabrielle wear before should look ridiculous, the way she stares out of the window like she’s in a painting should be silly, it should make Ginny’s palms itch.

“Gin?” says James, worried that their game is over.

“And if you don’t put on dry clothes I’ll eat you!” she roars to their delight. She chases James off and picks Albus up to carry him away. Doesn’t look back.

***

It’s one of the last days of August, probably one of the last ones that is warm enough to have breakfast outside at the table that was left in front of Luna’s workshop after the summer crowd left, when Gabrielle announces that she’s leaving in the morning.

“How come?” Ginny says, her eyes on the paper in front of her. She doesn’t need to look to know where Gabrielle is, she smells just the same as the lilacs that Ginny helped Neville plant behind the bakery years ago. 

“Back to school,” she says, and at that Ginny does look up.

“Yeah?” she prompts, actually a bit curious.

“Fashion,” she says, “in Paris.” And Ginny wants to say never mind, of course, but she just took a bite and is still chewing, so she starts pouring tea instead. “I took the last semester off because my supervisor said I lacked connection to the real world. He urged me to spend time in nature.”

Ginny snorts around her scone. “That’s not very urban of him.”

“You know very little about me,” says Gabrielle, her head tilted in a curious way, the morning breeze ruffling the hair that has escaped her braid. “Either way - he was right, I had let Paris absorb me. And it is not like I could explain to him that I spent my girlhood in a large castle looking out at trees.”

Almost involuntarily, Ginny glances at the house that Gabrielle has lovingly renovated over the past months. Gabrielle laughs as they both see the irony of building a rather large means to look out at trees, and it’s infectious. Bright, happy in a way Ginny is starting to realize Gabrielle wasn’t when she’d first arrived here. “Is it a Muggle school then?” she asks.

“Mixed,” Gabrielle leans over for the milk and Ginny stares at the way her arm shows under fussy sleeves that ride up her bicep. Even the line of it is graceful. “It is not so different, patterns and sewing and having what makes sense in your mind translate.” 

Ginny hums like she understands, and maybe she does. She’s seen her mum count rows of stitches as the puzzled over sheets of see-through paper, creased and perforated after being used over and over again. “Your last year?” she manages to croak out, as Gabrielle grabs an apple from the pile in the middle of the table.

She’s asked at the worst possible time, right when Gabrielle has sunk teeth into the crisp apple. “It –” to Ginny’s surprise she smiles and hurries to swallow, not hardly graceful. “It is - sorry - I have to redo the internship and write about it, as well as make many pieces.”

“Well you can always come back here,” Ginny hears herself say. “If you need the space.” Gabrielle crinkles her eyes at her, polite disbelief, but she nods. They’ll see.

***

She does come back, the next summer, pale and determined. She sets up her machines in front of the enormous window-wall, and Ginny learns how to dodge balls of pins being thrown at her if she shows up with tea at the wrong time. 

“What are you rushing for, anyway?” she asks, when she snatches the latest rolled-up and stabbed-through ball of fabric out of the air instead of just ducking, careful not to squeeze it. 

“If I get this done before the end of July it will be sold,” Gabrielle says.

Ginny looks at her properly, her hair a bit greasy, her glasses low on her nose. “But you’re holding a sweater?”

Gabrielle groans, “fashion is ridiculous, I will explain another time. May I have the tea and silence please?”

Ginny sets the tea down, picks up the one that looks like it’s been here since breakfast, stale and ice-cold. Gabrielle shrugs at her look of distaste, and gets back to sewing. Whatever. Ginny has a basket braiding class to get to, Luna told her she could come along. So she will.

***

They celebrate New Year’s that year in Luna’s workshop, where she’s pushed everything to the side, and they’ve set up a long line of mismatched tables. George spends the better part of the afternoon trying to get all of them to stop wobbling. The flickering candles reflect against the windows that are dark with the night outside by the time they sit down to eat, having carried in trays and bowls and pans full of food cooked in the old bakery’s kitchen. Molly complained the whole time about not trusting the oven, and when Ginny tries the turkey and it’s delicious, she jumps up, her mouth full, and yells: “HA!”

“Gross,” says Albus, who probably learned that word yesterday, and everyone laughs. Molly admits that she was wrong though, and the sense of buoyancy that gives Ginny will probably last until at least May. 

While everyone that didn’t help with the cooking does the washing up, Ginny and Neville set up for chess. Ron, because he’s insufferable, ends up joining the game, which forces Neville and Ginny to team up. He still wins. “Let’s play something else,” Neville suggests, and Luna floats in as if on command with the stack of Muggle games they’d bought from car boot sales at some point. They quaffle about what the rules might be until Hermione shows up and teaches them, fondly despairing as always. 

***

Rolf is around so rarely that when he does come, usually tanned and grinning, heavy with stories, they throw him a party. They plan this one over breakfast, one of Luna’s fantasy fry-ups in front of them. The carrots are a strange touch but not the worst one she’s come up with, and Ginny interrupts the conversation happening around her.

“Can it be a week later? Gabrielle has her deadlines.”

“Of course,” Rolf says. “Who’s Gabrielle?”

“The fashion lady,” Luna says, “with the shimmers.” Rolf nods like that makes sense, and Neville and Ginny grin at each other. 

“If we ask for George to come early I’m sure he can help us put together a stage,” Neville says, trying to get back to the planning, and Ginny knows what Rolf is going to say before he says it.

“I don’t think we need a stage,” he says, “I prefer to be between the people, you know?”

Ginny finds Gabrielle on the floor of her studio four days later. “Did you die or are you done?” she asks.

“Both,” Gabrielle tells the ceiling, so Ginny tugs her up to standing. Between the glasshouses that get foggy and warm in winter, underneath the lights they’ve strung up, they both sit curled up in rattan chairs, with a nice glass of gin tonic. 

“Who is in that one?” Gabrielle asks, pointing at the lit window in one of the houses they don’t normally use. 

“Luna,” Ginny says.

“Did you fight?” Gabrielle asks, sitting up with her surprise, and then at the look on Ginny’s face: “You are together, no?”

“Luna and me?” Ginny croaks.

“And Neville,” Gabrielle is frowning now. “I have been assuming - ”

It’s probably fair. She’s kissed both Luna and Neville more than she’s kissed anyone else in years, and they still sleep all together in the big bed above the old bakery most of the time. “Luna’s married,” she says. “Rolf, her husband, he’s here now so they’re spending time together. They were very young, still at school, but he was ill and they thought he might die.”

“And he does not live with her?” Gabrielle sounds offended now in a way she didn’t when she thought they were a triad in less platonic ways than they are.

“I think they prefer it like this,” Ginny says, she hasn’t asked, really, but Luna looks happy. “They studied beasts together, and then he went away to find them, and she stayed here to make them.”

Gabrielle sinks back into her chair. “Hmm,” she says. They look up together, and Ginny flicks off the lights with her wand. The stars appear as if out of the black while their eyes adjust.

At the party they roast things in the massive fire, and dance around the little square between all the houses. Ginny loses her top at some point, and she doesn’t mind at all, feels feral and real as the music keeps going, instruments getting passed around so people can have some rest, something to eat. She kisses Gabrielle as they dance, and feels naked for the first time that night when a small soft hand travels up and down her back, makes her shiver. 

When she wakes up the next morning, in the bed above Gabrielle’s studio, the first thing she notices is the silky floor-length robe. The second thing is the tea Gabrielle is making here.

“I can’t believe you,” she says. “All those cups I’ve brought you!” Gabrielle turns around to look at her, eyes bright and happy, and when they kiss again it tastes like tea.

***

Ginny is just dropping off some corrected copies when she gets called into Calliope’s office. “Sit,” she offers, and Ginny looks down at herself. Shabby corduroys and a sweater nicked from Neville. “I know this is not planned but I hope it won’t take a minute.”

“Sorry,” Ginny says, and she rushes to close the door and sit down. The desk is heaving with papers and behind her boss’ chair the wall is filled with articles, ready to be shuffled around until she’s happy with how it’ll look in print. “How can I help?”

“I'm looking to hire someone full-time, for the sports sections,” Calliope says, as ever not one to beat around the bush. Ginny is too scared to guess wrong to move, she holds her breath as she looks at Calliope. “If you’re interested we can skip the hiring process, I’m happy with your work, you can sign whenever.”

“Can I tell you next week?” Ginny asks, but she knows what she’s going to say.

“Of course.” Calliope sits back. “I hope you’ll take my offer seriously though, I’ve been following your career and I’ve been very impressed with your work.”

“Thank you - ” Ginny starts.

“You were in Astoria’s class right?”

“A - a year up, I think.”

“Makes sense,” Calliope settles back. “Well she spoke highly of you, and it’s been frankly insulting how little we’ve gotten to see you fly.” 

_And now that you’re thirty_ hangs in the air with every conversation Ginny has about her Quidditch career, she feels like she could hear Calliope say it too. Neville tells her it’s in her head but right now it feels like it’s on her tongue. Like it might fall out if she’s not careful.

“D’you have a copy of the contract I could look through?” she manages to ask instead and Calliope finds it for her. Shakes her hand before she leaves. _Who’d have thought this pissing about with notes on matches might land her a real job after all?_ she thinks as she looks it through in the elevator. Voldemort’s hairy nipples - she’ll have to tell her family. Ginny leans her head against the wall for a second and knows this is good. She’ll tell the team tomorrow.

***

It turns out that Ginny is much better at journalism than she ever was at Quidditch. She loves it, not with her whole body like she loves Quidditch and the never-ending marvel of being able to fly, but with something else. The same part of her that looks at a puzzle and knows how it’ll come together, that looked at the village in the valley and saw what it could be. When she gets comments on her writing it doesn’t hurt like it did when her flying wasn’t good enough. It’s not like being asked to give more when she’s given all and is worn out body and soul. It’s like now there’s two people, or three, or a whole team, who care about this thing that was in her mind, and they’ll help her get it out just right. 

The only downside is how unpredictable it is. Some months are so slow Ginny contemplates writing a book, others have her packing her bag to go home only to get a frumpy pissed-off owl come in through the window.

“Fuck.” She checks her suitcase, looks down at herself. She’s not dressed for New York.

The best part about New York is that the only bar worth going in the world is here. Ginny opens the door to the dark basement bar with a heavy sigh, she hasn’t even found a hotel yet. Pauline greets her with a wave from across the room, and she sits down on one of the tall stools, orders an apple juice. 

It’s early still, people are having a drink after work all around her, so she doesn’t get a chance to do much but enjoy having something cold and sweet until someone stands a little too close to her. She looks up and - “Gabrielle!” she cheers.

“You did not tell me you would be ‘ere!” she scolds, but she hugs Ginny back warmly. Ginny feels a bit embarrassed about being dressed head to toe Gabrielle’s latest, but the way her dark green sweater gets smoothed down over her shoulder tells her she did good.

“Only found out I’d be coming three hours before arriving,” Ginny tells her. If she’s really honest she hadn’t really thought about Gabrielle being here too. “And I’m off again after the match tomorrow. It’s just that Andy needs to do India because I don’t speak Hindi and - well.” No one cares about all that. 

Thankfully Pauline shows up. “How do you two know each other?” she asks as she gets Gabrielle a glass of white wine. 

“Flatmates of a sort,” Ginny tells her, unsure how to explain it all.

“Thought you lived in a free-love hippie commune?” Pauline is looking at Gabrielle as she says it, and it’s strange, to think that Gabrielle would talk about them, her, what they’ve been sharing for years now but to Ginny has always been something to be kept safe. 

“Hence the _of a sort_ ,” Ginny says.

She talks to Gabrielle until closing, her newest line is apparently going to be based on trees and she’s looking for someone that can make silk in the right shades. “Like this sweater,” she says, “it is moss.”

Ginny hadn’t thought about it like that at all. It’s a nice sweater, it looks good on her, formal enough but she doesn’t need to be wearing a bra. She’s wearing trousers from a few years ago, she likes their fit and the weird print. “And these?” she asks, feeling bad about not wondering before.

“The river,” Gabrielle pets the fabric like Ginny has seen her do a hundred times, though not usually with Ginny in it. “The way the water distorts the stones on the riverbed. Do you not remember the show?”

She does, the models had been so thin she’d had to resist the urge to invite them all over for dinner afterwards, and they’d stepped through ankle-deep water like some sort of wood nymphs. It’d all been very Gabrielle. “They’re my favourites,” Ginny says, instead of something useful. 

“It is nice with the moss,” Gabrielle tells her, “very in-between seasons.” And that does make sense, when Ginny thinks of the river she doesn’t think of how it gets thin and dry in summer, but of how swollen and heavy it feels in spring and autumn.

Pauline joins them at some point, and Ginny is having such a good time that she doesn’t realize the bar is closed up and the mop is dancing across the floor. She turns to apologize and finally registers that Gabrielle is leaning into Pauline, but staring at her. And now that she thinks about it, why not?

Ginny wakes up the next morning from Pauline’s alarm. “What time?” she mumbles, and Pauline pulls the cover up around her to keep her warm, then unwraps the silk scarf she’s slept in.

“Early still, pet, I just gotta get the deliveries.”

She tries to go back to sleep and finds it’s impossible, probably the jetlag, so she dozes in the dark, Gabrielle heavy and familiar half on top of her. Pauline comes back and strips out of jeans and fleece before pausing. “No, get back in here,” Ginny urges, so she undresses all the way and does.

They look at Gabrielle together, how she sleeps, and Ginny tugs her braid loose, finds comfort in the tickle of curls against her skin. “Unreal isn’t it?” Pauline wonders out loud, stretched out next to Ginny and slowly warming up under the covers, heavy and soft and new only in how she looks at Gabrielle. “That we’d be close enough to touch, that she’d let us.”

“Don’t,” says Ginny, frowning before she knows why. “She may be beautiful but she’s also very annoying.” She doesn’t know how to say Gabrielle has so many hard-won traits and skills and to put what she is down to beauty would be like putting her art down to talent. It’s not untrue, but it is unkind. 

Gabrielle smacks her lips a little. “Will we make the second sleeve?” she asks.

“That’s French, honey,” Ginny pets her hair as she says it, and Gabrielle sighs, extremely put upon.

She rolls further onto her stomach, pushes up her hips a little, entirely unmistakable. “Some of us have work to get to today.”

“Sure babe,” Pauline laughs.

“It makes sense you know,” Gabrielle says when they walk to the subway together. It’s absolutely impossible to Apparate around New York, there are people everywhere. “You made the first sleeve, now you make the second one.”

Ginny laughs at her. “What’s the third round then, pockets?”

“No, for the third one you make the beauty,” Gabrielle bumps against her a bit as she says it.

“Do the beauty?” Ginny grins wider.

“Yes!” Gabrielle beams up at her so brightly, “it is from the knights, they would fight and if it was even the third one would determine who got the princess - the beauty.” 

Ginny couldn’t tell her she’d been trying to make a dirty joke in the face of such joy and enthusiasm, so she links their arms together. “Very romantic,” she teases.

***

“Oh,” Harry says, “don’t tell Al about the Marxism thing ok?”

“What Marxism thing?” Ginny turns to frown at him. He’s leaving his children to be looked after by Neville and her while he goes off to the continent and now she has to watch her mouth too?

“He’s been really into politics,” Harry says, like his kid isn’t twelve. “And he’s been looking for something that’s just his for so long, I worry that if he found out that all the books here are from the time _I_ got really into Marxism, that he’ll stop.”

“He couldn’t stop if he tried,” Ginny reminds him. “The pale one is into it as well.”

“Yeah,” sighs Harry. “Who’d have known, mm?” He’s probably talking about Malfoy’s kid but suddenly the whole situation seems entirely bizarre to Ginny. “Oh and while we’re here,” he reaches over Ginny’s head, swears, steps on the back of the chair that she’s still sitting in and before she can protest, he’s jumped down again. He gives a little box to her.

“What?” 

“Well I figured that if I hid it there, you’d either never find it, or if you did find it you’d never guess it was me who put it there.”

She opens the little box and brittle trumpet noises sound, a flickering and fading charm spells out _MARRY ME GINNY_ , and she hands the box right back. “No thanks,” she says. The image of the ring will be burned into her retina forever, it’s _pink_.

“Yeah I know,” Harry sighs, tucking it away. “I got it for when you’d be done at Hogwarts.”

“But?”

“But you were faffing about the countryside and impossible to find, and then I realized I didn’t need to be married in order to have kids,” he shrugs. “For the best, isn’t it?”

“Hell yes,” she tells him. Her hands itch to do something normal like making tea, but they’re in Hermione’s stupid library because Harry’s kid has decided he wants to bake a cake and the sheer dread of watching him fight an oven that’s probably 500 years old made her flee. “Think James might be done yet?”

“Sure,” Harry laughs, fonder than she wants him to be. He can’t know, right? “Let’s go.”

***

George and Angelina get divorced, and it’s not like she didn’t see it coming, but it’s still very weird to have both of them asking if they can come stay. Angelina was first though.

“Ron?” she calls through the Floo, and he appears, kneeling down in front of the fireplace without realizing he’s in his boxers. She pulls her head right out. A second later the Floo flares green and his head floats among the flames. He’s laughing at her. “You’re disgusting,” she tells him. She also tells him what’s up and he promises her he’ll figure something out.

Angelina shows up with a suitcase and the fakest smile Ginny has seen since the war. She spends her days going to work like nothing ever went wrong, and her evenings meeting with lawyers to draft an agreement about everything that did go wrong. She wants it to be done before George gets back from traveling joke conventions in the States, which, Ginny has to admit, was truly inspired of Ron.

One afternoon however, Angelina comes back right after lunch, grabs an apple, and disappears. Ginny goes looking for her when she’s done chatting with Luna over the dishes, and finds her on a rooftop. She calls for her broom, which she’s been neglecting, but it knows her. It comes when called, it would if it were half-way across the country probably. 

“Get on,” she suggests, and Angelina wipes her face, and does. They fly until Ginny’s legs are tired, and lie down on the top of a hill. Stare at the valley together.

When they get back, Gabrielle is carrying a big bundle of wet fabric that she drops at her feet as soon as she sees Ginny and Angelina land. Angelina asks about the puddle and Ginny is happy just staring until Gabrielle suddenly narrows her eyes, looks at her hands, then her face. Something crosses her face, something hard to place, and it makes Ginny go put her broom away. In the kitchen she comes across Luna, who is elbow-deep in a pan of string beans. 

“Ugh,” Luna complains, “you reek of sex. Please shower and then help me clean these up.”

Ginny laughs, kisses her cheek to tease her, and runs up. In the shower she thinks of flying and string beans, and the wet sand around the fabric Gabrielle had probably washed in the river. Nothing else.

***

It happens by accident. It’s early in the year still, and it was so cold she’d put on the lumpy purple hat she normally never wears. When she gets to work, instead of passing by her office first, she goes straight to the bathroom, which means that when she washes her hands, she’s still in her coat, and when she looks up she sees herself. Bit round with the coat and the hat, cheeks red from the cold. What it means though, is that she realizes how much she looks like her mother. They’ve always had almost the exact same eyes, and something in Ginny’s paler skin, the way she’s gotten a bit softer since quitting Quidditch, makes it so she can’t even see herself. Just some version of her mother. She takes the hat off immediately, vows to give it away, and that helps. Her hair is comfortingly spikey, nothing like her mums, she focuses on that. 

From then on, though, she stops drinking and eating out. She wakes up every morning and runs up something, usually a nearby hill. She climbs trees and helps Neville in the greenhouses when he’s back on the weekends from Hogwarts, and relishes in the way her shoulders start to strain against her shirts again. Only Bill comments on it, when he visits with Fleur. Gabrielle and Fleur disappear into her studio as always, for rapid French discussions that would be impossible to understand even if Ginny were any better at French. 

“Since you’re newly buff again,” he says, “does that mean you’ll come rowing with me?”

She does. It’s a blissful camaraderie, and she finds out she’s missed having a team like this. She’s not in a boat with Bill, he’s taller and heavier than her, but she gets to join a mixed boat and joke around with Millicent and Padma when they jump into the water after practice. 

She doesn’t tell Bill, of course, that she started rowing because she hated how old she’s gotten, how it makes her look like her mum, but he must have noticed. He must have told Fleur. She must have told Gabrielle. How else would Gabrielle know to whisper, “there, not a bit of Molly left,” when she’s shaved Ginny’s hair for her? Ginny faffs about with the stupid cape she’d wrapped around herself until the sting has faded. And when she looks into the mirror, Gabrielle was right. That’s her face.

***

The rowing team doesn’t practice in summer. The whole club is closed, she’d have to break in to get a boat, and she would but she’d prefer not to lose her membership. It leaves her itchy and a bit mean, and when she stands up suddenly at breakfast nobody looks at her.

“Let’s go camping,” she suggests, like they do this all the time. Luna looks at her with pity, and Neville is really busy this week with marking so he doesn’t even bother saying no, but Gabrielle shrugs.

“Sure.”

They meet an hour later, Ginny with the old tent that she had to summon because she wouldn’t have been able to say where it’s been the past years if her life had depended on it. Her backpack has been charmed by Hermione and she was grateful for it when she stuffed food and a hopeful bottle of wine into it. She finds two folding chairs between the greenhouses and those go in too. At the last moment she remembers her toothbrush and a change of clothes. 

Gabrielle is wearing her shiny work-out clothes, and some of Luna’s hiking boots, still muddy from a jungle or mountain ramble with Rolf. She has a little bag around her hips, and her hair in a ponytail. 

To be in the forest is a relief, the coolness of the river as they follow it up and the steady pace they set calms Ginny down, and Gabrielle is surprisingly good at keeping up. Her skin glows and the hair under her ponytail gets a little damp but she still smells like lilacs. They talk a bit, but mostly they enjoy the walk in silence, especially when they get beyond where they normally turn around. No need to be back before nightfall, they’ve got a tent. 

When the shadows do start getting a bit long for comfort, Ginny stops. “Here?” Gabrielle asks, like they’ve been having the conversation out loud.

“We can try and find somewhere it’d be nice to wake up in the morning, but it doesn’t matter too much. It won’t rain, and it’s only for one night.”

Gabrielle looks around, narrow eyes with concentration, and then she points to the river. When Ginny tells her to lead the way she does, and they end up on a bit of a clearing, close to the water, from where they can see the valley they’ve come from. 

“Fuck,” Ginny says, mostly to herself, when she looks at the flat tent where it lies. She’s holding a pole and doesn’t need to look to know that Gabrielle is doing great with the fire. 

“Do you need a hand?” Gabrielle asks, and Ginny isn’t even sure where to begin.

“In a sec,” she says, and she puzzles with the poles and the hooks and the straps until she remembers. “If you - there.” She hands the pole she was holding to Gabrielle, and pulls the other one into an arch. Gabrielle holds on tight, and soon the tent is done. “Perfect, thank you.”

It’s only when she walks in that she remembers there’s only one bed in this tent and it would have been polite to at least ask if Gabrielle would be alright with that. 

“Oh,” Gabrielle sighs, “but this is lovely.” It’s musty and old and those sheets have not been washed in a decade or so. “And it’s all complete! Let’s cook?”

Ginny scrambles outside to pick up the things she’d dropped on the floor while rummaging around her bag for the tent, and together they cook up vegetable-something with rice. At least she’d remembered coffee and tea, Ginny thinks with a grimace when she packs away the strange mix of things she’d tossed into the bag.

Gabrielle eats like it’s a feast fit for kings, sitting on the fold-out chair in front of a crackling fire, as they watch the sun disappear properly. It feels like it’ll be a quiet night of staring at the stars, and Ginny is just settling in properly for it, when Gabrielle sets her bowl to the side with unhappy determination. Louder than she’d normally be. “You know,” she says, “you’re kind of an arsehole.”

“What?” Ginny looks at her and finds no sparkling eyes, no twitching lips, not a single glimmer of amusement.

“It is so impossible to know where you stand,” Gabrielle says, arms wrapped around her knees for shelter, “you won’t tell me anything, and every time I think this might be something, you sleep with your sister-in-law.”

“Ex – sister-in-law,” Ginny protests weakly, not sure where to look. Where’d this come from?

“She is a symptom, it is not about who you sleep with,” Gabrielle says. “Then I give up – and suddenly it is fine again. You are back and want to camp.”

Ginny leans back in her chair. Closes her eyes so she can hear her thoughts better, only hears the river. Is that how it is? She remembers tentative questions about staying the night more often, about going on holiday together, about going out for dinner and laughing by candlelight. Alright, maybe.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“I do not care,” Gabrielle sounds weary, stiff and harsh. “I am finally ready to hear why, and decide if I want to keep trying.”

She sounds like Fleur, and it almost makes Ginny smile, before she realizes they’ve probably talked about this. Which means Bill knows. She’d be mad about it if it didn’t make her realise she’s never talked about Gabrielle with anyone, and not for lack of trying on especially Neville’s part. “I never imagined - never thought I could have this,” Ginny finally says, and she sounds wet and small even to herself.

Gabrielle gives a huge sigh and stands up, doesn’t walk away but sits down on Ginny’s lap and cups her face. When Ginny’s hands wander to her waist, Gabrielle leans in for a kiss. “Tell me all, Ginny Weasley,” Gabrielle says, “every sad bit of your hard life and how you have come to expect dismissal instead of love.”

“And you’ll forgive me?” Ginny asks, wishing she was joking.

“I already have,” Gabrielle promises. And seals it with a kiss.

“Shhhh,” she tells Ginny when she tries to ask. “I’m concentrating.” It’s silent for much longer and Ginny wants to walk before it gets very hot. “I’m really bad at Transfiguration,” Gabrielle says, when she opens her eyes, but she looks determined as she waves her wand. On the forest floor appears an absolute monstrosity of a rubber boat. _MADE FOR SPEED_ it says along the sides in unevenly spaced letters with the worst colour scheme Ginny has ever seen, but Gabrielle is grinning like she’s invented the wheel.

It turns out that this was the greatest idea anyone has ever had. The rubber boat is shallow enough that they don’t run aground very often, and when they do they wriggle themselves loose easily enough. When the river is narrow they fly through the landscape that took them all day to walk up, and when it’s wide they laugh as they stare at the sky. They almost miss the village for how much they’re enjoying themselves. When they shakily stand up on stiff legs, almost losing the boat to the river in the process, Ginny feels so entirely at ease that she could cry. 

She does cry, later, when Gabrielle stands in the shower admiring her own bruises, all along her legs and ass. She complains so much about how her beautiful skin has been marred that Ginny needs to grab on to the edge of the bath not to slip as she laughs, tears streaming down her face with joy and relief. 

“Wait does this mean you want to get married?” Ginny asks, as she’s spreading Batterson’s Bruise Cream on Gabrielle’s naked back. Gabrielle looks over her shoulder, getting the rumpled sheets wet with her hair. 

“You’re not well,” she tells Ginny. “This is how you wish to have this conversation?” Ginny shrugs, can’t imagine why not. “Alright,” Gabrielle says, settling back on her folded arms. “No, I do not, it’s not so important to me and it’d be strange to claim you when you are Luna’s and Neville’s too.”

“I don’t usually have sex with them though,” Ginny points out. “Oh are we going to be monogamous?” She’s not against the idea, it’s just a bit novel.

“They are your partners regardless of whether it is platonic or romantic, or whatever form it takes. And I will be. You must decide for yourself.”

Ginny wants to tease Gabrielle about knowing which books she’s been reading, but she realizes something just on time to lie down next to her and wait for her head to turn, for Gabrielle to look at her. “You have been,” she says, it’s not a question. “But what about Pauline?”

Gabrielle looks brave and sad. “That was fun, I enjoyed that.”

“Can I try, and I’ll tell you in a few months if I mind?” Ginny asks, and she gets a kiss for that. 

***

“Lulu!” Ginny calls when she sees Luna, frowning at the sky. Luna doesn’t look over. “Lu-lu-luna!” she sings, “beauty like the moon!”

At that Luna looks up, and she runs over at speed, jumps on the table and starts a stomp-dance that has Ginny laughing and the cups rattling. Gabrielle comes over and, to Ginny’s great surprise, starts clapping a beat. Ginny stumbles over it, but this is a challenge, so now she has to.

“Lu-lu-luna,” she sings, “light and bright as day.”

“Lu-lu-luna,” Luna and Gabrielle sing for her. Fuck. “Beauty like the moon!”

“Lu-lu-luna,” the girls sing, and Ginny has an idea. “You’re always free to leave.”

“Lu-lu-luna,” they sing, and Ginny shouts it from the top of her lungs. “But I’m happier when you stay!”

Luna cheers and claps, and Neville, who must have come to check out the noise whistles. Gabrielle and Ginny harmonize on one more lu-lu-luna but they end up laughing too much to draw out the ending, and the sun shines. Ginny thinks on what to call this, and ends up settling on elation.

***

Just when Ginny notices that Gabrielle has been a bit strange since she came back from her latest trip, she realises that she’s been a bit strange for a while now. Is she sad? What happened? “Gabs?” she asks, jostling her a little with her shoulder. “Everything alright?”

“Hm-hm,” she hums, but it’s a big fat lie, and it’s insulting that she’d think that Ginny wouldn’t notice the way she brushes her hair from her forehead. It hurts something in her chest to see it. She considers leaving, she doesn’t need to be here, watching Gabrielle work, she could be helping Neville in the greenhouse, or making tea with Luna. But then Gabrielle looks at her, from the corner of her eyes, just a quick glance, and Ginny kneels down next to her. Turns her chair so they’re facing each other.

“If you need me to bugger off I will,” Ginny promises. Gabrielle smiles, a bit sad, and pets Ginny’s face. “Or… I could tell you whatever is clearly bothering you can be solved with a good conversation, smashing some plates, or a combination of both.”

“Where did all your clothes go?” Gabrielle asks, still petting her face, and it takes a second for Ginny to process.

“Oh,” she says, “let me – come on. I’ll show you.”

Gabrielle follows, as Ginny drags her across the street and through to her bedroom where she used to have an ever-growing stack of clothes on shitty shelves. Her bed is hidden under the pile of unfolded clothes. But the wardrobe Neville and her have sanded and painted and sanded and painted stands proud and pretty. The only clothes in it for now are the ones Gabrielle designed, neatly hung or folded.

“Oh it’s done,” Gabrielle cooes, petting the wardrobe. “And it looks so good!”

“Yeah,” she’s a bit proud of it. “Gathered my clothes from around to figure out what goes and what stays.”

That can’t have been what bothered Gabrielle, and by the way she sighs when she sinks down on the bed it isn’t. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“What for?”

“I have been…” she waves a hand. “Not generous.”

“In what way?” Ginny steps closer to her. Gabrielle looks up at her, eyes a bit pinched. “What is it?”

“I just…” She takes a deep breath. Her eyes fill up and Ginny feels so useless. “I just – want a hug,” she cries. She wraps her up, tries to relax into it even though the angle is weird until she decides to just lie down with Gabrielle on the pile of clothes. It’s better, even if something is poking her in the back.

“What happened?” she asks, hoping no one’s died. Gabrielle says nothing, just cries silently into Ginny’s shoulder, and she feels so useless. Luna would say something right now, Neville would ask questions, but where do they get their words? “Gabsie,” she urges, entirely at a loss.

“I’m all alone,” she cries, and Ginny holds her closer, too much grief rolls around, too much to try and speak through at least. “You’re always leaving, and they’re your family not mine and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but I’m always just waiting.”

“Is it that you’re missing your mum?” Ginny asks, because Gabrielle misses her mum sometimes and Ginny knows the feeling even if it’s been a while. 

But Gabrielle wriggles free and sits up, her face ugly and red from crying, her make-up beneath her eyes, her hair a mess. Ginny leans in to hold, to kiss, and Gabrielle moves further back. “You don’t get - it. At - at all,” she says, her breath hitching, her determination demanding her voice stay under control. Her eyes burn with it. “You’re always - gone. Away. And - and then you don’t miss me, you don’t want me, do you even like me? All I do is - long. I long for you all - all day.” Her face twitches. She stands up, ready to leave.

“No,” Ginny says. Before she wants to, really, since she has no idea what to say next. Gabrielle waits only a beat longer, and then does leave.

That night it takes Ginny three hours to sort through all of her clothes, and she feels stupid when she realizes that the only real factor for deciding whether it stays or goes is if Gabrielle has ever so much as hinted at liking it on her, it can’t go. She thinks about the conversation they had while camping as she falls asleep, and all the aimless wandering she always does when Gabrielle is away for work and Ginny isn’t quite sure when she’ll be back. When did she start doing that? How is it different from the wandering she did when she was still too raw with grief to sit still? Is it different? In bed she stares at the space next to her and thinks of its familiarity. The empty spaces that have stared back at her from hotel rooms around the world.

She wakes up expecting tangled curls to tickle her face, and finds the bed emptier somehow than it had been last night. The sun is only barely up. It feels nothing like home, not at all how it should. She twats about the kitchen for only ten minutes before realising – just because she’s no use at Divination, doesn’t mean she can’t take two eggs cracked before they made it to the pan as a sign. So she turns off the hobs, pours the tea she did manage to make into two mugs, and levitates them so she won’t trip and fuck up on the way over. Gabrielle is fast asleep, her hair a heavy braid beside her, her knees tucked up. Ginny wants something. Something she doesn’t quite have the words for until suddenly she does. So she kneels on the bed next to Gabrielle, watches her face twitch as she wakes up slow as always, familiar and adored for almost a decade now. 

“I’m sorry,” Ginny says. “I’ve brought tea.”

Gabrielle turns onto her back, her whole skin is alight with how much she is alive, whole and real. She smiles, takes Ginny’s hand. Sighs, only a bit of sad remaining in the corners of her eyes. “I love you too.”


End file.
